think green

"Once students were attracted by seeing the urgency of economic problems and by a sense of their mission to solve them. Now the best come to economics for the opportunity it provides to exercise arcane mathematical skills."

J.K. Galbraith (1969)

Is the environmental "problem" really an economic problem? Is it, fundamentally, something that economics can tackle and provide a "solution" to?

Well, first things first: there's no doubt that it has been economic production and the lifestyle associated with it that has been (and is) at least a part of the problem. Secondly, economics as a discipline hasn't really helped in providing any way out (some might argue: how could it since it has, for years, been justifying more production and consumption: growth, precisely).

So, what could economists say: that the basic problem is that the externalities produced by economic activity are not 'internalized' (i.e that the costs are not taken into account). From this it follows that appropriate taxation on polluters will lead to an efficient level of pollution (or, alternatively, if property rights are well defined then the people who cause the pollution and those who are affected by it can trade so that one pays the other off for the privilege of polluting or having clean air/water etc.. Who pays who depends on how the property rights are assigned).

Of course, that's all crap.

1. It's not clear that when it comes to pollution everyone knows the exact extent to which particular activities affect which particular people and in what specific ways. Distinct from that, it is not clear that anyone can know how increased pollution will have an impact on human beings or the environment: there may simply be things we don't know we don't know: fat tails.

2. But let's say information or knowledge wasn't a problem. Also, assume away problems associated with property rights (do you have the right to clean air and what if an industrialist producing in country X has an impact on the quality of your health/life?). Even then:

3. How would all of those trades come about? Isn't there a free-rider problem here? I know that you're willing to pay to prevent pollution and since I would benefit from that as well I might be tempted to say: why should I even bother paying for it? But if I think like that, so will you, and we might end up where no-one pays for the reduction in pollution.

4. Or: if you're very poor (P), you might say, since money is more valuable to you than ill-health, I'll accept a payment in return for allowing the industrialist to pollute. P could be a poor country. Who is anyone else to say that this is a non-voluntary transaction or that P doesn't fully understand the full ramifications of the transaction? That smacks of paternalism, and seems to go against the dominant idea that tastes/preferences are given, indisputable. To talk about 'the good', in an objective sense, really means, or so it is argued, sometimes going against freedom-and that's paramount.

5. But why should the costs be 'internalized' in the first place? One example of this is as follows: our actions now will have an impact on future generations (on people who are not even alive now [can they be called 'people'?]). So, why should I cut back on my consumption just so Z can live a better life? What is the economic argument for that? Not sure if there is.

6. Economists will say: well, if you think of society as one infinitely lived individual then this problem disappears. But that's really a mathematical solution-and not based on any ethical foundations. And of course, if you assume that then distributional concerns become less pressing. What else would you expect! Less pressing, but not eliminated.

7. a) So, if society is one individual (a "representative agent") then, obviously, if he pollutes he's really affecting himself. Therefore: pollute less. [aside: you may have noticed that the only considerations here are of a particular type: consequentalist and human-centred. To say that we have obligations to non-human beings is really to take a step in another direction]

b) but there are still questions about how to weigh up costs and benefits over time (the inter-temporal distribution problem). Typically, economists will think: the benefits to "me" (remember, there is only infinitely lived me) in some future time period (t -125, say) are of less value (importance) than benefits to me now in the overall stream of benefits (as seen by "me at t-0...i.e "now")

But why is that? Is there an economic rationale for that? Think about what's actually been done here: effectively, what we're saying is that the welfare of someone in 125 years is not as important (it is "discounted") as the welfare of someone (which conveniently happens to be me) now. That itself is an ethical issue (as explicitly recognized by Stern in his influential report).

Verweile doch! du bist so schön

Won't you stay still, for once! Like the devil you are, always fading, always soaring. The truth of you now, and only now. The image undistorted by a question. Take off your glasses that you may see clearly, that I may see...Unloosen your hair and mourn the death of me-at your hands.

dog and nothing but a dog.

And at last he meets a black dog
running around in smaller and
smaller circles
like an ominous spider
spinning its vast web...

like a carrier raven,
like a cat, like a mouse,
like a black-burning bush.

like the still point of my heart.

He feels he loves the dog with a love
whose essence is hopelessness just as
hopelessness has its essence in love.

But there is no essence,
only dog,
black dog,
staring fiercely back at me,
like my own fate.

the human voice

(with apologies to bob)

Desert Island discs remains one of your favourite programmes. Of course, to the purist the idea of a song horribly truncated like that, the interjection of the human voice, the mixture with personal memories, anecdotes, politics, and humour must come across as something quite barbaric. The Beeb pandering to the unsophisticated palettes of the untutored and lazy.And yet, for all that, the human voice remains the thing that fascinates you.

Micahel Foot, at seventy five, his mind bursting with intellectual excitement. Sue Lawley, oozing with so much delectable charm, that sparkle in her eyes (or so you imagine).

A life lived with deep commitment. The idea of home. No, not the idea: the reality of it shaping what and who you are, always fondly remembered, acknowledged. American politicians (and modern British ones) always sound comically fake. Not even stage actors in a second-rate play at a run-down theatre. There's something ridiculous, eminently laughable, about conservatives.

the death of the heart

If ever I was tempted to read a book for its title alone, then it would be this one. I love the first words, the first page of a novel, because they draw you in; they're like a film trailer or a band striking up before the actual performance, or the moment you adjust yourself and settle in back home, the door firmly closed, the lights blaring away, time kept at bay. Events in the world as distant as the stars-which sounds kind of heartless (Hume's little finger and all that)...

The crackle of the loudspeaker before it starts; the maulvi clearing his throat, preparing himself. That registers, but ever so faintly, like the slow return to zero of the galvanometer needle and its shadow. You lose track, eat when you can. People come and go.

The other day, you bought Moveable Feast, and since there wasn't much traffic, and because of its size, you started to read the blurbs on the back as you drove with one hand. Which is kind of crazy, especially as you're not that fond of books after all! The dougal, on the other hand, has read everything under the sun.

-Yesterday, lunch with your old friend, canny and wise, as worldly-wise as one can imagine. He has this incredible (and irritating) habit of being able to look someone up and down and then form an accurate judgement of their life, their unique problems, their soundness. A bit like Sherlock Holmes.

But he just wants to discuss his 'woman problem'...the problem being that he's addicted to them, even though he can't admit it. But because he can see so clearly, so uncompromisingly,he recognizes there's something wrong, that someone with half his strength would have become unmoored if they'd gone through what he's gone through. Addicted not to the love of women, I should add. Not much point asking 'where did it begin?' or trying to describe the boundaries of desire. Each man is an island. And so is each woman.

What can I say? I shrug my shoulders. "Go and see a psychiatrist...a female psychiatrist."-

The mystery of the opening up; a beautiful face glimpsed. You move, north by north-west. Uncharted territory; the only belongings you carry with you are the shoddy ones you wear. Your hands as dry as the pages. You forget all the reviewers and critics that you so despise. There's no telling only, at best, a showing, a pointing to. Commas and breathlessness.

The momentum of the inner world.

Shall we talk about the end, then? A good ending, the perfecting ending, when you close the book in your hands, and just sit still with the sad realization hanging around you that you have to return to life, ordinary life. You think to yourself: what the fuck was that?! Just the death of the heart, or something like it.

cross my heart

Couldn't find any of this online, but it's a lovely cd. If you live in Lahore I can make a copy for you.

In a discussion with a colleague yesterday: what counts as a cross-listed course? Is there a set of criteria -perhaps not rigorous or definitive, but something on which one might base one's judgement?

One idea is that you run courses together, simultaneously, hoping students themselves will make the leap across the divide, see and make connections themselves? This, the 'pillar model', seems to expect too much of students in my opinion. And you can really only make that leap when you're on a sure footing yourself. Since most of us are blind to our habitual ways of thinking, and are only reminded of them once we've left them-like an exile from his homeland-then, and only then do we really get a clearer picture of our assumptions, methodologies, aims, history, etc.

The other way of thinking about this is a real conversation, a dialogue within the course itself. The problems here are legion: who, today, has that type of inclination or, indeed, training, to cover such vast ground in anything but a superficial way?

What, exactly, is meant by the cross?

How can one enter another's territory, land, without knowing the required etiquette, the ways to approach the other? Not just the borders, or places where people and ideas overlap, but deep into the heart of the other? How do you open yourself up, make yourself available without losing yourself? The awe, the bewilderment, the utterly mysterious: like the face of the other, that you recognize but do not know. Somewhere, somewhere deep in you the stranger ceases to be a stranger...

the lost ones

(with thanks, as always, to jacky B.,"a dark glass", for pointing me here).

Heart.
Still.
Untrue.
For you.

"I want to know how you fell. Tell me all the details!"

My heart?

"Who cares about your heart!"

What would you know? The ghost songs of a life. I nearly became a white man, but didn't. (The Allama once wrote that he was saved from becoming an infidel by reading Wordsworth. A bit dramatic, but there you go!). Always the intrusion of the comical in what turned out to be, ultimately, a falsely serious life.

How I nearly scored a goal for the Colts. The rain pelting down, washing away the image of Danny on the sideline, screaming to me to go on my own. Beaten the (offside) trap. The slanting rain, the moment opening up before me...

Or how I nearly made the right decision: put my name down for philosophy, only to renege and take the cowardly get-out clause. The loss of nerve, the swerving at the last moment to safety.

What about the time you were nearly seduced by a married woman? Get out of here!

On the dark side of the moon, the other you lives, the one who chose 'right' instead of 'left'. But why the moon? In California, right now, there's a tramp or a millionaire , who has my name, and less of my fate. Closer to home, in the walled city, a slobbering drunk lies heaped up in a corner, wearing my stolen coat, dreaming my dreams. And in the mirror, I sometimes catch a glimpse of that other me: confident, bragging, years of success under his belt, his hands resolute, knowing, his eyes dazzling, his heart not in need of another...there he is,just as ready to fall, the old fool.

fine form

To find one's deepest instincts; to stick by them.
---D. H. L.

Something odd to our modern ideas about the notion of narrative, a sustained picture of ourselves over time. It's as if the edges of the mirror are clouding inwards, so that the face itself is invaded by doubt, mystery. How to look at yourself clearly? No wonder the world seems so opaque!

Of course, the years of fakeness accumulate around you, can be seen in your eyes, heard in your speech. Words and voice always the first things to look for when you're looking for betrayal-assuming you can still recognize it. The tell-tale signs.

How to find the form that is an expression of your innermost desires, aspirations? Mostly, life is a compromise, a slow erasure of vision. Family, society, work, or religion will beat it out of you.Your old Jewish roots warn you though:don't expect too much: to be human is to be anachronistic, to be a stranger to the world. And yet for all that, this can veer wildly into a sort of cheap gnosticism, a tardy kind of self-centredness. No man is an island, and we all need "bridges", Forms, stepping stones, places of refuge.

Time passes. Only the young and the old understand. F.R. has this line: five seconds! If we had five seconds of love, truth, and understanding, what would the rest of the day be like?! The moment you wake up...how to keep that moment of awareness with you during the day? That pure gift? First thoughts? You're sure there's an old Islamic text one should recite on waking. Etiquette. Probably sounds too formulaic, mechanical to us now. Still.

What use are the words, without the life? Religion isn't a matter of words or concepts.

under the glass

...In the morning the mirror is consulted again,'
said Doctor Johnson, but
not of this one dumped in the back of a Peugeot truck:

it is left, one corner broken off, among the riven architraves,
and won't be consulted again.
It is in with the ripped out sinks, the sofa springs' dying octaves,

it is with the builder's rubble that is valueless.
Now that its silver leaf is
peeling off, it is pond water with gleams beneath the surface.

There is a frogspawn of rust-spots. Black stipple on mercury.
There is a cloudiness
of depth and current, scratched by teeth beneath the glass

but bright enough for provincial eaves and firs to crane
over - for the first glimpse.
The mirror is put out. It will not be consulted again.

First, there is the misplacement - a veiled indoor convenience
must cope will all that light.
It reflects a worm's eye view of what will soon evaporate:

the passers-by with collars up for whom spring broke
too early, knock wet
turgid blossom onto it - equally misplaced where breeze-blocks sit,

as incongruous as the fractured seventy eight
of Beethoven's Fifth
dumped in the stingers - where nature and something else conflate.

Second, there's the passivity - the mirror tilted as it is
reflects every detail
of onrushing sky - the gulfs of blue and weightless cumulus

that drift like floes, that billow, fly, and break apart.
And so I think this bit
of junk's not just the still reflecting point of art

but may be likened to a certain juncture in
the history of clouds,
at which formations such as these might part to glimpse

maelstroms both human and equine, far below,
and which will yet
tear softly apart, to show the goings on of god knows what.

Lastly, there are the soft concealments - the mirror invokes
the droplets
of wet that steamed off with the last to smile in it:

the youthful nurse's theatre of unwitnessed face,
the couple who
moved in and out of it some twenty times a day.

Now all that consults it is sky. Soon, it will go
to the council dump,
but here finds cloud after cloud moving slow

though its skin of liver-spots is utterly still,
under the glass of which pours this
bright moving floor or conveyor belt, freckle-faced.

---Tim Liardet.

~~~

Under the glass, behind the mirror, the words not spoken, clearing, rising, breaking the still surface of our lives. Time reverses in the evening mirror. A dim round light above it, a fading yellow haze, helps bring back something of the past. The lines on your face, like those etched in blood by a tribal, to mark the passage of time, the forward rush to dying silver.

To walk in the morning light, the dark leaves still by your side. The rain has cleared things up, and you smell fresh earth after a long while. The icy northern wind: the grass trembles, and your teeth chatter like an old man's. The mud is compact, full of crystals.Reflected light held in a calm puddle of water. Walk on, like someone discovering a new world, or the straggler left behind, surveying what remains of a settlement.The wind howls in the empty corridors of the half-completed building.

In the dark intervals between, you found yourself.Lost, as always.I can read, I can write. Is that the sign of the humanness in the human, like the strawness of straw?

Things get misplaced. You worry about that for a while. What direction is this, you fail to understand. No step brings us closer.Winter has brought a kind of clarity; you see yourself without shadow, pared down to the essential, or at least the minimum. The fundamental questions still applying as time goes by.Life, thought, as opaque as ever. The seasons of discontent. The generality of it all.

The other day, buoyed up by the prospect of this blasted term finally coming to an end ("closure", as the Americans love to say), you suddenly see one of your better students in a corner, pensive, quiet. Is everything okay?, I ask. She starts to cry: it appears that one of her cousins has killed herself. Just ten days ago N had told me a similar story about one of her relatives. What can you say? That there's a distribution of pain and suffering and joy in the world and that it will reach each one of us in its turn? That we are here but to fill in the slots, the individual names not being important?

Of course, this thought struck you even during those sensuous dances. (What a bundle of fun you are b!, I hear you say). Why should beauty remind you of death? But no, it wasn't that, or just that. Rather...I bumped into one of my old friends at the re-union. At first I couldn't recognize him. Don't think I've actually seen him for 20-odd years. He was, and remains to this day, one of the most down to earth and soft spoken people I've met.

"How have you been and where have you been?"

He sort of shrugged off these questions and just said: I've been kind of anti-social". His hair used to be jet black, plastered to his head. But now, it was all wavy and grey. His eyes were sunken and he looked not unlike a figure out of a Durer picture. Forget which one. A strange sort of madness, or half-madness if that's the right phrase, in his eyes. I looked at his name-tag. Who was this, after all. Then it clicked: he was the one who'd been in jail for the last fifteen years on a murder charge.He was the one. It could have been anyone.

In the early hours of the morning, with most of your friends sloshed and the initial charm of the dances wearing thin, you walked around and talked to those of your friends who could still manage to speak clearly. One friend, extremely rich, told me of the terrible time he'd had over the last seven years: litigation and family disputes; another of how he was racked with guilt over his kids not being able to speak Urdu, about them not being able to communicate with his grandparents. Behind the surface, the cigars, the girls, the booze, there's the old familiar heartache.

You think to yourself: get the hell out of here, get out quick and don't look back.

the memory of the future

The meaning we receive can be put to the proof in action only by each person in the uniqueness of his being and the uniqueness of his life.
---M. Buber.

Without meaning, the world is just things.
---JCO.

There is no "proof" or set of "arguments" for or against God! It seems quite ridiculous that anyone would want to try and convince someone else-one way or the other. And isn't a good life already religious, in some sense? What is that sense though?

Maybe not an 'inner transformation' of one's life-that seems to be asking for too much. Nor is it-and this is only your two cents-a fully coherent life, one in which there's the acknowledgment, understanding, and acceptance of a narrative thread. Our lives are too jumbled up and fragmentary for that. Then what?

Moments of recognition-of others, of ourselves.All this is possible only against a certain background, a picture of the soul. And that background work is done by others: the compassion of loved ones that allow you to be: volo ut sis. No higher wisdom, don't look for it.

Memory binds. Forward-dreaming and the past are lovingly carried with you, and are not sources of illusion or fantasy. The distance between us, between all kinds of pluralities, is recognized, the way broken-ness is. It wants to, and doesn't want to be named. Memory is a bridge that spans time, all that was thought to be lost, lost to thought.

What is the future but the past? The point becomes a circle. Like a boat moored to the land, it gently rocks outwards and is brought back in by the same rope!

ravel

Southern California: I thought I'd lost you there for a moment!

~~~

The weird and yet fascinating story of the Ovitz family. Mengele was in his thirties. The randomness of it all. The damned and the saved.

~~~

'a sheltered, privileged, mysteriously stalled life'

---JCO.

Fuchs found Southern California, 1937, "still undeveloped, fresh and brimming and unawakened, at the beginning everything in this new land wonderfully solitary, burning, and kind."

"what is the secret elixir that we must look for, the thing that gives a story life...It's the melodic line-when it all comes together, it sings."

The incredible, the superhuman ability to accept the cards that have been dealt to you. With the blessings of the sun. Not to ask: what might have been but, instead, to inhabit the parcel of history that's yours.

~~~

The piling up of books, the sheer, dizzying fertility of the culture-churning industry. The rapid, burgeoning, growth of academic papers, newspaper reports, tweets, blogs, 24-hour news, cheap pop music, the derivative market: criticism, analyses, commentaries, biographies of biographers, films, clips, documentaries, all available at the click of a button; the mind not knowing what the hand does. This frantic, frenetic gathering and accumulation of details, information, its exponential growth; the hyper-inflation of words, the silence of the commons destroyed.

The libraries, the museums, vast cathedrals of the human mind, vast storehouses categorizing everything that's ever been done or thought. What a tangle we've got ourselves into. Another fine mess. Long ago it's outstripped the human capacity to name, let alone understand what it all means.

At a stroke this might seem oppressively burdensome, the great weight of the past, unplumbed, sunken, as dark as whale, so vast that it defies structure; on the other hand, the sheer accessibility to this bloated, overblown mass of details, profundity mixed up with trivia (the need for search engines to shuffle it all about) may, in fact, have the opposite effect: a delightful giddiness, light-headedness: pick out whatever you can for yourself, like a great jumble sale. You stumble across something, a story, a reference (good ol' wiki), a writer or a musician who was once considered great but that now everyone's forgotten or will forget in 30 years. All but a few amateur experts and dusty-haired academics, holed up in the tower have even heard of them. Everything is rediscovered. Like the Eloi, you start from scratch, not remembering what happened before. You find a few leaves away from the whirlwind.

Multiplication. Think about it: Prafit with his two volumes and thousands of pages. Do you really think anyone's going to read that, give you the privilege? Or Burton, six volumes on melancholy with the fashionable blurb: this books is about two things: melancholy and everything else.

The sustained brainwork, monkish devotion to the Cause, the blind, fanatical collecting, storing up for the winter of the mind, this colossal, mammoth effort comprising small, marginal advances added to one another. A few samples for you, from one page: The Last Imaginary Place: a human history of the Arctic; The Future of the Brain (dim, let me tell you); Choral Masterworks; Kansas city Jazz. The examined life...This morbid inability to forget. Major and minor works. Black studies, gender studies, development studies. Post-colonial, post-industrial, post-everything..the colossal leviathan ploughs on, devouring..heaving with a monstrous incomprehension, like a silent movie...Great Authors Series; Great Books. There's something neurotic, hurried, unnatural about it all, this tumble of imagery and dialogue. Bring back the Taleban. The 'world of celebrity, fast movement and shiny living'.

Art staves off death. Old hat. The art of storing up art. Now, that's a story!

Steiner: Errata.

the jewish question

Re-reading Putnam's nice little book, Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life.

What struck me-and what probably drew me to this book in the first place-was the central question which could be stated simply as: "a life without questions". The tree of life, the tree...

To go back to the first place; the dark fruit of our origins gratefully accepted. "6.522: The problem of life..."

We're too quick looking for the answers, not paying enough attention to the questions; the questions we ask are often the wrong ones anyway. Academics specialize in this. To what extent are our questions related to life, an ordinary good life?

Rosenzweig, despite his anti-Islamic stance, is fascinating. At least what little I could make out from the Understanding the Sick and Healthy book (also something to be re-read).

Come on, come on, I hear you say. Spill the beans, cut to the chase. Give us the quotes you've culled and killed, taken out of the context,to bring back to the stream of life.

I dunno, seriously.Close the books, none of that matters today. Have a cinnamon roll, some black coffee...put on Grizzly Bear and be thankful for the care and attention of loved ones. To speak to, of, for...does this not mean to think for, of, with?

*I should add that this has nothing to do with politics. It really is something that is, if anything, pre-political (if not opposed to the law or the political, then at least prior to it).

But since we're here, there is no escaping the terrible reality that it was perhaps the very questioning, the reluctance to "conform" (in St. Paul's sense of the word) that, in part, led to the barbaric 'final solution' (a point made by George Steiner, I think).

Also, it meant to allude to the fact that there is no question, that the setting up of questions-political and otherwise-is often already a kind of betrayal. 'What is a black man? And what colour is he?'Who is a 'real' Muslim? Once one has posed that question, the door is open to all sorts of categorizations of fake or not pure Muslims: Ahmadis, Shias, Sufis, etc.

the impure heart

the winter sun's halo above the library, dispelling the finer particles; on ledges, pigeons alighting, and suddenly taking flight, fearful. the dark-slit windows of the fortress library; my mind on a precipice.a speckled pigeon scaling the incline of the lamppost. a student turning on his heels...

from where i am, i get to see so much; but little of the outside filters through my darkened windows. I spy, with my little eye, something beginning, and something ending.these worlds in miniature, fragile and precious, the brightest hour in the heart's mirror when I speak your name.

the darkness in our hearts: anything goes: nothing comes. the open field, a diagonal dry pathway, that cuts back to home, that i know even in the dark. i can find my way when light begins or when shadows fall about me. but when you look my way, I'm lost and falter. the purity of our hearts remains unseen, unknowable-God only knows; what is impure shines with its own name, is recognizable, is broken.

Everywhere around you there is the inheritance of silver, the splendour of green, but only in the heart the glitter.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled...

~~~

He said "no" and really meant "yes"
she said "i hate you" but she spoke so softly...
each denial is a denial of something.

The executioner laughed, and though he didn't see it, word of it brought a smile to the prisoner's heart.

'the night is so dark

the way so short

yet you do not wake

against my heart'

---G. Hill.

The winter heart, that struggles with its own blindness, full of impure thoughts. Dreams of spring. The blossoming of flower from stone and ice.

~~~

okay, okay, I know: this is supposed to be about politics...

the arab spring

What we lost, by following the fucking Saudis, was a beautifully coloured strand of our being. What we found, instead, was the coarseness and crudity of the bedouin in our souls, the desert in our hearts, the wrecking light of the southern sun. No Persian ever called me niggah. Arab spring? Nah, it's always winter there.

~~~
I found a word.
you came to me.
The hunt was on,
but i lost you
Because I saw you everywhere.

the fabric of our being,
richly woven,
undone by what fair hands!
A green celtic bracelet around your thin wrists,
the snakecharms of your eyes,
leave me tongue-twisted.
"Faith is under the left nipple"
And infidelity under the right.
Lost to the world,
I found you elsewhere.

the heart's desire

****] heart
****] absolutely
****] I can
****]
] would be for me
] to shine in an answer
****] face
****]
****] having been stained
****]

The starred heart, hardly recognizable, not even yours.The heart's endless desire to break.The coal fires are nearly exhausted, and it's not really bitterly cold anyway. There's still enough warmth in your body, even at 12 at night, out in the open.The rooftop restaurant buzzes with hushed expectation. The fires, the flaky ash-grey embers, are moved to one side and the well-worn carpets are rolled out. Some sort of second-hand Persian stuff.

The red and blue notes are tossed into the air; cheap Bollywood numbers blare out into the dark night sky. Alcohol starts to flow, the empty bottles kept neatly on the floor. Old a_ slouches in his chair, his arms folded, resting on his knees. He still has his silly brown wool hat on. He looks on at the scene unfolding before him, memorizing it, or so it seems to me; he's like the last man on Brighton pier, looking out to the sea for a kind of lost freedom.

Someone else, who you don't even know, reaches out with one arm, like an old grizzly bear trying to claw at what he can't have. He mumbles some tune to himself as he does so. You can see he's intoxicated by it all. By now the academics and the sufis have left. J says to me: "If I'd wanted to see so many fat people, I would have stayed at home!"

Sherry blushes like a 12 year-old girl, with all the attention he's getting.

The dances: mostly boring. But one woman in particular is spectacularly beautiful. Large brown eyes, sometimes softly burning, at other times sparkling. Her hair down to the small of her back, a silvery blue and green 'choli', with a strapped back. Thin, tall-ish. Smooth, bronzed legs.

All sounds very decadent, I know. But it wasn't. Cross my heart, and hope to die.

without title

acquiescentia in se ipso.
---Spinoza.

Being the person one just wants to be. Not wanting, being. Not the pleasure one derives from that harmony,or not just the pleasure, but the life itself (of which pleasure is a part). In silence. But not a resignation to the satisfaction of desires, motivations, goals we just happen to have. One notion of freedom lies that way, no doubt, and the alternative view of freedom, 'objective' or impersonal, can also be paternalistic: freedom structured or ordered by reason.

But no, being the person one wants to be.

A freedom from titles, names; to find a good that is not so tightly linked to them. On the other hand, a good that is expressed in the things you do in your life. 'The quality of our attachments is the quality of our understanding.'The loved one has many names, is nameless.

you burn me.
---Sappho.

Classes over, the term all but come to a close, just the fag end now.A tremendous sense of relief. Students' gazes buried away in their books, the library ticking over with thought, your hands cold and dry, but the lines more prominent now. A small tree, nameless, with its dark eleven o'clock shadow. There's something both beautiful and horrifying in the thought that it will survive us, that life goes on, somehow, miraculously.

Your mind has slowed down, is less restless. Always strayed too much, unlike your starred heart. Like an old person, you look forward to soup at 4 o'clock. You have no desire to talk to anyone. Just stay in your cell and read up on community. Yes, I know! Maybe some fragments that you'll hold, not shape, in the palm of your hands.

In the morning mist you walked past dark leaves, a few holding the memory of summer and brilliant blood-red.

You were late, as always. It passed you by. This sense of lateness, your defining characteristic, reflected in your eyes, part of your inheritance.You wait, patiently,for some kind of recovery, recollection and more. The winter mind, the winter heart, conserving,holding back, for the memory of the future, the day you remember me.

]
] nor
] desire
] but all at once
] blossom
] desire
] took delight

freeing the dust

a moment, amongst moments. thinking it would open up on to something, and not collapse under its own weight, become thought again.bright and gleaming.stone blossoming into flower, dreaming of star.

The water
flashes
each time you
make it leap -
arching its glittering
back.

Each moment slowed down, frame by frame. You return to it, read it slowly, as you imagine doing (ideally) with your life. Where that (ideally) comes in was tricky. The water, the thing, on its own, isolated. The world before us. Then human agency; then the world again, the world alive, independent existence.At the centre: the ability to make something happen, to be connected to the world in that moment. I think, I am thinking. To 'I am'. The gaps covered by that arching back, like a salmon returning home, a rainbow of hope, a mirror, doubling what was one. The salmon is the stream. 'I think'. The 'I' is given, must be lovingly recognized, acknowledged.Home, your perpetual origin, was carried in your heart,all along.Water helped you remember, bring you back to the black land, where your fair hand turns, and turns again, the dark pages.

Rabbi Mendel of Kotzk asked one of the disciples of Rabbi Moshe: "What was most important to your teacher?"

To which he replied: "Whatever he happened to be doing at the moment"

I said, the summer garden I planted
bears only leaves–leaves in abundance–
but no flowers.
And then the flowers,
many colors and forms,
come forth...

What magic denial
shall my life utter
to bring itself forth?

This is near the place I used to live. The river Roding, usually so tame and quiet, melancholy, actually flooded once.How amazing that is, when something crosses it's time-worn boundaries, makes contact with what has surrounded it for so long.

All I remember now is like a loose thread.When the Roding slows, and stones lie still in its dark waters, my heart is lost.

We humans, who have thought of commonalities in terms of things that transcend us, like religion or abstract reason, or in terms of blood and soil, have never stopped to think that living side-by-side with other people was what it was all about. If all truth was on the boundaries, then human beings are that boundary par excellence.

~~~

Chekov said: Let’s put God—and all these grand progressive ideas—to one side. Let’s begin with man; let’s be kind and attentive to the individual man—whether he’s a bishop, a peasant, an industrial magnate, a convict in the Sakhalin Islands or a waiter in a restaurant. Let’s begin with respect, compassion and love for the individual—or we’ll never get anywhere.
---V.G.

...

Merry Christmas !!!

~~~

Lovely Christmas with friends: roast chicken (lemon and thyme); rich fruit cake, mashed potatoes; warm spiced cranberry drink (vodka optional). Good, decent, and intelligent people to talk to and yet, for all that...what is it?

A told me, matter-of-factly, in a hushed voice, amidst all the laughter: "I don't want to be here". Well, join the line, kiddo. But she'll be okay, will land on her feet. Always does.

bt, young and enthusiastic, practical head on his shoulders, always speaks his mind, and knows his mind. More importantly, points me to interesting poets and novelists. Impossible to keep up with, but that's okay.

Hasan K, tall and lanky, a bundle of bones, glasses, and communism ; the academic's academic. Could talk about China for ever, and still hold an audience.

Someone says, above the din:"critical thinking". I hear snatches of conversations around the room, Lately, I've become quite invisible. Then someone says, with great confidence, "academia is about questioning everything."

Is it, I wonder to myself.This isn't really about freedom, though you recognize how important that is. That you can question anything is not the whole of the issue; it is, rather, whether you need to, whether some things are (and should be) taken as given. Not just your reasoning abilities themselves, but all sorts of practical and moral insights. Some things are left best in the half dark.

Fudge, under the table, looking on at us with those sad eyes. Old fudge, unable (or unwilling) to participate in our conversations. Seen it all before, I guess. The most reflective dog this side of the Oxiana.

And yet, despite all that, there's a restlessness in your heart. The shadow of those who are absent moves across my face, is on my skin, twists beneath my shoulder blades. Home is where the heart is. And your heart is homeless.

At random, I flick open the book closest to my free hand, as people of faith in the past might have opened their holy book. The first words I catch are:

'We have entered the dark stretch of night just before dawn
as we have entered the dark stretch of land
before the home's come to.'
---Ken Irby.

The time to speak freely is not upon us yet, only its distant shadow. Still, bound, the tongue weaves a pattern as the mind imagines a world, the heart does not know.It was on a day like this, the chill in your bones, generations of unknowingness reflected in your sad eyes. We are here for a while, then gone.


You fall. Head over heels, again. There's no fool like an old fool. So, here you are, out of step, out of sync with the times. "Walk on," or walk in. The distinctions no longer interest you, are like the haze in your heart.

half-way

'Took my heart to the limit,
and that's where it's going to stay.'

(as pop songs go, this ain't half bad. Bob, forgive me!)

Well, Cornelius?

'Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet'

Fragments, fragments is all we have. Hold them carefully in the palm of your hand. Close your hand, flesh to flesh, like the circle of earth, when night becomes day, and opposites meet. The hollow of the hand, the locus of prayer. The deal was done. Give me back what was mine. This world in miniature, like a speck of dust in your eye. And yet, it still brings tears!

How many images go up in to the making of a human soul? Perhaps only one. The mirror broke, the ice queen relented, and now I hold pieces of her heart in my hand.

~~~

Little r has, in one hand, throughout the day, either Billy Badger or Rupert the Bear. It's strange what we become attached to, what we become used to. Even a silly face has its charms after a while. And prisoners, no doubt, reconcile themselves with the marked faces of their fellow prisoners, as if sharing a common fate could eliminate the memory of freedom.

~~~

"You must have a lantern in your hand to give light, otherwise all the materials in the world are useless, for you cannot find them, and if you could, you couldn't arrange them."
---Coleridge.

~~~

]heart
]absolutely
]I can
]
]would be for me
]to shine in answer
]face
]having been stained
]

[

The bracketed future,
[
together, alone: [ ]
Time, the space between us [...]
Of waiting.

"Look...doings!"said little r.
Soon there will be [I am]
God [as a] witness [to] our doings.

Our words b[ro]ken, as the b-ro-ken world.
What kinship does b have?

Go, if you must, ] [
I await your return...]

~~~

we have
a Grand Master of chess
made of electronic circuits.

But above all
we have
the ability
to sort peas,
to cup water in our hands,
to seek
the right screw
under the sofa
for hours

This
gives us
wings.
---Holub.

The unclenched hand, 'solar generosity', said Larkin; the curvature of our hands, a sign of our humanity:knowing what to let go of, what to hold on to...

Q&a

Where are you when you think? Not here. Which is strange, for someone who's 'all there'. Yesterday, I had to stop the car at the side of the road, put on the emergency lights, and repeat to myself: where the fuck are you? How can an oriental be disoriented?

Where are you when you think of another?

When you're a student you always hear teachers trying to be sexy by saying something like: 'it's not about what you know, it's about the questions you ask'. Knowing isn't everything. Or something equally odd: 'question everything'.

7:00 a.m.

No-one about except the cleaners. The earth still slowly coming to terms with the morning light. Shall I be open today, or not; who will find love on this bench, under this tree today, and who will lose it? Black coffee, a croissant. Lecture: woefully under-prepared. Hoping to wing it. Nabs, dear Nabs' books just come in, sitting on my desk, next to the pile of articles on utilitarianism.: Ken Irby's collected poems; Anne Carson's 'Fragments of Sappho. Danke, danke.

Outside on the steps, someone has made and left two white paper boats, the size of my thumb. Really quite delightful.Both capsized.Sunk, the night before.

The questions, you found, were only there to pass the time, to hear your voice, to read your words. How superficial is that?!

to fall in love with,
as surely

as the loved one
in the photograph before me.

---Ken Irby.

What intelligence you have is quite silly, really. The light in your eyes; I'm light-headed when I think about it.The distances between people. One might as well be Algerian or Chinese.

My house: there aren't many things in it any more. Nothing to count or tally. The only people there are visitors, strangers, or cut-throat property-dealers.And yet, for all that, still it stands, empty like a human heart.

I-level

I am I,
when I am you.

Dodge the questions, as you dodge the bullets."Droll rat," they would shoot you, if they knew.In the mean time, the time we have between us, let's dance together in a minefield.

Loyalty, fidelity...to what or who, God knows? Your own Jewish nose, so unremarkable in other ways, has picked up the scent and follows your trackless ways. What kind of religion is this, that leads you to infidelity?

Darkness crumbles. Is it day or night? The winter fires, Anna said.Remember? The late flaring of your soul. For so long, your I at an angle to the universe.I see you face to face now. You've saved the last dance, the dance of death, for me.

Golden words of wisdom from swami blacksun

Irony of ironies! Having just written an article for the papers (don't bother asking for the link: it's as crap as this blog) on the importance of trust for development ('social capital' and all that) I get a lecture from an estate agent on the importance of trust! Bizarre!

So, there I was, in this dusty little square, a little corner of the dust-bowl that is Lahore, carcasses hanging outside the butcher's, flies, the works. His office: cheap wooden paneling (like you might expect in a 1970's second-hand car dealer's office). On the wall, next to a huge grey filing cabinet, a picture of his father...Sufi something, something. A lovely railway-green table. Qur'anic verses on the wall. Fading mustard sofas, bits of the covers peeling off. Two fans, both gold plated. A huge wall clock, something one might expect in a railway station. A rich, ornate pattern of flowers on the ceiling. You almost imagined that behind some closed door they were making B-grade films. Or God knows what.

As I wait for the estate agent an old bearded man tells me, in response to my question whether X still lives around here: who knows. He may be alive, he may be dead. After all, we all have to die, we all have to go back to God.

Yeah, er..okay, uncle.

First lesson in life: never talk to anyone unless you have to.

The lecture:

Do you see this? he said, holding the flimsy contract in his hand.

"It's all meaningless". What matters is trust, whether someone's given their word. In the end of the day, this piece of paper is only as good as the character of the people behind it. I've done lots of deals with people and it's been about honour.

Lesson number 2: when someone puts their hand up to stop you from interjecting, just so they can continue on their cheap Sunday school sermon, you know they're majorly screwed in the head. Ride the tiger, grasshopper.

I could see this wasn't going to be a pleasant next 20 minutes. When Paks go on a rant the best response is to just let them have their say (hope you're taking notes, Roxana and anton!) or, if you're like little r, the 'chaabi master', just egg them on a bit!

Lesson number 3, little ones: always imagine the end of a conversation; the handshake, you getting back into the safety of your car. When the other person talks think of something pleasant like cinnamon rolls or Monica Bellucci...it helps pass the time. Now and then raise your head so as to indicate you haven't died of boredom and nod your head as you say: "Really?".

So he continues...are you telling me there's no corruption in England, America! There's more, much more! "There are people living in cardboard boxes in the Bronx chipped in his friend, the "engineer."

Of course, I'd been making the point in my article about the importance of trust. But that has to go hand in hand with contracts, a good and transparent legal system. Part of me wanted to ask him: why do you think Pakistan's so fucked up then? But if I've learnt anything over the years it's that it's best not to engage with other human beings. Especially if they're not very pretty. A harsh lesson, I know. But it's the way of the future, I tells ya! Sod all that stuff about community. Give me my money and let me go home....

On the way back: stopped over at the Last Word, as a drunk might find refuge in a pub in the mid -afternoon, sinking into oblivion. Didn't want or need anything, but at least here there was a moment of respite. Anyway, my Burnisde books haven't come in. Doesn't matter. Khair...

~~~

Pharmakon: the poison and the remedy are the same; time is the great healer, time is the wound. Your absence is real. Is reality anything else?

the orient

You know, I've traveled a bit in 'the orient' (why, I even live there and might be said to be an oriental of sorts myself) but I've never seen anything like this. Missing out again, I guess!

But no, the serious point: what is this fascination and obsession with 'the east' and with women's bodies and the veil? Of course, there's a political context to it; it would be naive to assume otherwise. The 'East' as passive, half-awake, there for the taking. The east that needs to be liberated, set free from captivity ('the lustful turk' and all that).

The East as a dreamworld, a place and time of lost innocence (but also, confusedly, of uninhibited sensuousness). Gaugin, perhaps? In a world that was being narrowly defined by rationality and industrialization, wouldn't it be nice to return to the pre-reflective states and to nature?

On the other hand, isn't a lot of the criticism just reactionary? In the 'west' people suffer from alienation, a lack of protection; they face the relentless gaze, the tyranny of fashion; they miss out on family life, homeliness, security, modesty, etc., etc. the harsh world of politics and the public realm being left to the men, the hunters. And shouldn't we respect differences? Eastern (Muslim) women are not like the farangi women, are they?

Well, don't buy it for a second, not a for a second.To talk about the Enlightenment nowadays is to align oneself with all sorts of unpleasant bedfellows. Narrow views of rationality, a thin concept of 'Man', a lack of respect for difference and uniqueness; the crushing of all that reeked of tradition, superstition, emotions. Science, prose and not art or poetry. Sure, but isn't it also an attempt to see what we share with one another, what we hold in common? A respect for sameness doesn't necessarily lead to the flatlands; instead, it can be just the opposite: east, west, man, woman, rich, poor...there is only the human being.Or, to be more specific, the ability to see ourselves clearly depends on our ability to see other people clearly:to keep the right balance between people's specificity and individuality and what is common. Us & them. The '&' unites and individuates.

winter fires

There's something primitive and satisfying about putting on the heater in the early hours of a winter morning. Is this a deep ritual from our ancient past?

Driving along the Canal yesterday, late in the afternoon; the green, opaque water slowly moving down, as if it had suddenly become more reflective, cautious, this last month. It carried with it a few twigs and dry leaves. It seemed as if no-one even recognized its existence.On the way back, a delightful scene of lots of small, ankle-high fires in the grass. The gold vivifying the green. Each fire unique and yet, somehow, mystically tied to the other.

'You realize I attach great importance to the human voice, more than to what is written, for what is written does not contain my voice'

At Canal View you notice that the woman has a very distinctive face, very tender, tinged with some sort of sadness. She folds her arms. Has strange cheekbones. There's something 'western' about her. Not her accent or even the way she carries her hair (which is always a dead give away). 'You always pick out such things,' I'm told. Yes, that's true, I always like to see gold in the straw, wonder what history a face has? God, I can't stand mirrors any more.

There's no betrayal like the human voice.
---Richard Ford.

A white butterfly floated into the prison and my heart beat faster. She left, and my heart fluttered after her.

~~~

Five states of mind. None of them true. Quintessentially, you draw circles around an absence. Your heart, officially dead wood. On which a butterfly perchance came to rest.

~~~

Behind the black was the red; and behind the red the white. But behind the white there was only a heart.

~~~

The way of the future is the way to the past. If time flows then, as the Romans knew, it flows backwards towards you.

Sun and time fade; the winter light, weak and fragile, coldly reflected on the library's high windows. Books and soil become closely packed. The winter's mind conserving, not straying or wavering. All I remember is like a loose thread.When the Roding slows, and stones lie still in its dark waters, my heart is lost.

She smiled at the questions, as if to say, 'And if I answered you, would you know me then?'. A fraction of her known, as if glimpsed from afar.'She did not care for films, newspaper reportages, the radio. She wanted personal knowledge.'She was always on the inside; he always on the outside.But if you open this door, she said, make sure you don't bring in the cold with you.

fixations

Late 14c., fixacion, an alchemical word, from M.L. fixationem (nom. fixatio), noun of action from pp. stem of L. fixare, frequentative of figere "to fix" (see fix). Used in the Freudian sense since 1910.

Are there people without fixations? Is not the constant denial of fixations itself a fixation?

There are words, there are words we repeat to ourselves, to others, as if they were like us, or would like us. Everyone needs a fix 'cos everyone's broke. Spent.

A phrase, a word, your signature. What is the word or phrase that is you? For fuck's sake. Repetition and ritual. Need I say it again.

Epitaphs:
Death isn't all it's cracked up to be.
I want my money back!

~~~

Does death, then, have the final word, like a mask with its fixed expression? Something not to be repeated (or even spoken)?Perhaps then.And yet death is the fixation! 'The point of all points', the ultimate 'brokenness' that cannot be fixed. Aren't our fixations so many distractions from it, our way of extending the moment? Two ways: religion, art, abstract thought, as a way of detaching oneself from life; pure excess as a way of being absorbed in the moment, of forgetting that it will not last.

Why are you throwing this corn around?
To keep the tigers away.
But there are no tigers here.
It must be working then!

But what if you're fixated by someone? Breathlessness. Asphyxiation. Suffocation. Wonder, not finding its expression in life, turns to stone, becomes hooked to an 'object'. Does one end up killing the 'thing' one loves?

Goodbye Lenin

100 pages in to Lesley Chamberlain's 'Philosophy Steamer'. Not half as good as the excellent 'Motherland'. But still...

What was the appeal of Communism? For the life of me, I don't get it! Of course, the notion of the 'common good', notions that were floating about in the 'silver age' and already present amongst the populists before the commies appropriated it. But you believe too much in the individual-Jesus, that makes me sound like Ayn Rand!-to be really attracted to the common anything. No, not the individual, or any other useless abstraction,just my own and the people I know.

What is fascinating, though, is this battle between the individual, the rational, on one side, and the collective notion of the good life, and the mystifications of Tradition on the other. The 'progressive' part of Communism had to destroy the old order, old ways of thinking. And of course, it only led to a new type of fanaticism. To believe in reason only is, as Berlin rightly said, an extravagance. But, but, that sort of cold, detached view does appeal to you in some way. You haven't got an ounce of mystical or religious sensibility in you at all.

'Inwardness' as a form of resistance to the materialism of capitalism and communism alike. But, on the other hand, the need to get away from 'inwardness'. Keynes: Good states of mind depend on things working. The charms (and dangers) of utilitarianism, of piecemeal social change/reform.

In the end of the day, you're too lazy to be attracted to any ideology. Even religion seems like such an effort. Austerity and worldliness require too much concentration, absorption.

The Dougal once told me about a Quaker 'gathering' she went to. People just sat on their chairs and kept quiet.Reminds you a bit of that line from 'wise blood': The church of Jesus Christ without Jesus Christ. A bit like five easy pieces, if you know what I mean. I wonder if you can bring your own sarnies, or a flask of tea?Don't even have to talk to anyone either. Now, that's my kind of religion! Though you always imagine the chairs to be too austere and uncomfortable. Some sort of Bauhaus or Ikea crap.Far better the plush ones at Border's or, even better, the British Library.

all these things you are

Singularity. Black hole. The first star. Fish in time's dark waters; Tree, Daphne. Crow in dense foliage, dreaming of star. A mind, wandering. The fierceness of the day like your heart. A stray dog, Pythagoras's friend. Royalty without title. The red blush of innocence. A song of experience.Mirror, object, reflection. Cornelius, all these things you were...

the inner fake

I don't know what my best side is, honest, but from here, all that 'inwardness' does look awfully fake.

'I’m having trouble deciding whether I understand the world better now that I’m in my seventies than I did when I was younger, or whether I’m becoming more and more clueless every day. The truth is somewhere in between, I suspect, but that doesn’t make me rest any easier at night. Like others growing old, I had expected that after everything I had lived through and learned in my life, I would attain a state of Olympian calm and would regard the news of the day with amusement, like a clip from a bad old movie I had seen far too many times. It hasn’t happened to me yet.'
---Charles Simic, NYRB.

What have you learnt over the years? Nothing. But all those books ? Even less than nothing.Well, at least they helped kill some time. The Ph.D. , for Pete's sake? What a joke that was...and how easily you complied!The oddest thing is how people without an 'education' think that people with an 'education' are clever.

Cleverness was never what it was about. Would you give up your books, then, for a different life? Yes (except for the books with pictures. I like those).

But what else could you do ? (don't worry, this is just me talking to myself). I mean, you're even more useless in 'real' life than you are in the fake, academic one! Touché, old friend (er..remind me not to talk to you again!).

Would it have mattered if you'd been a good academic, though? Probably not. Then I'd be even more brain dead.And your use of the past tense is very sly, if you don't mind me saying. What if you'd actually read a book, you know, like from start to finish? If it ain't good enough for Samuel Johnson, it ain't...(note to former self: a fragment to shore up the ruins).

Can you be serious for a moment?

Yes, okay, for a moment.

Do you have to be East European to realize the absurdity of life? No, only to realize the absurdity of words like 'East European'.

Is there a streak of madness in your family? Well, now you mention it, old dougal...but no, it's what's saved us all these years. How do you work that out? Everyone has to work it out for themselves.

R.I.P.

the periodic table

"Distilling is beautiful. First of all, because it is a slow, philosophic, and silent occupation, which keeps you busy but gives you time to think of other things, somewhat like riding a bike. Then, because it involves a metamorphosis from liquid to vapour (invisible), and from this once again to liquid; but in this double journey, up and down, purity is attained, an ambiguous and fascinating condition … And finally, when you set about distilling, you acquire the consciousness of repeating a ritual consecrated by the centuries."

Was thinking about this and have to admit that the word purity does grate. Who, in this day and age, can accept the idea of perfection or an unblemished soul?

In today's Observer there was a piece on a biography of Kurt Vonnegut. These lines struck you:

'The book paints a picture of a man who was often distant from his children, cruel to a long-suffering first wife, caught in an unpleasant second marriage and spent much of his later years depressed and angry.'

This reminded you of a comment made by the great Shirley Williams about her ex-husband, the philosopher Bernard Williams. Something along the lines: might have been a good philosopher, but was a terrible husband.

Recently, similar sentiments expressed about Christa Wolf and, before that, about Isaiah Berlin (by Edward Said).

The Gauguin problem:
Can goodness be one-sided? One could be a good painter, a good musician, even a good philosopher (in some technical sense, I suppose) but does that count, how does it count, in the assessment of a person as a good person? A good life means what, exactly?

Well, of course, it's unfair to set the bar so impossibly high that no-one ever clears it. Secondly, it's unreasonable to expect, given the way human nature is, the mixture of elements that goes up to make a personality, that someone will be good in lots of different ways. You might even say, screw the morals, as long as he or she is creative in their field, that's what counts. By talking about 'the good' in ethical terms aren't you really just opening the door to fundamentalism and authoritarianism, to people who want to impose their idea of how goods should be ordered?

Thirdly, you don't know the context in which people make choices, only see things from afar. Someone stabs his wife, but he was traumatised by his childhood experiences;someone thinks nothing of the Palestinian people's aspirations but then you've got to understand where they're coming from; and if someone supports a dictatorship or a colonial power you have no idea why they did that (for their mother's sake?). Maybe there wasn't much of a choice anyway, maybe goodness is sometimes only about choosing the lesser of two evils.

I think there's a lot to be said for that. Of course. But just to be a contrarian..I'm sure you could find some 'goodness' in all sorts of horrible people. If Hitler had been a good painter, then what? If a suicide bomber is kind to his own family does that in some way absolve him or her of what they've done?

Most of the times the waters are muddied; but sometimes there has to be an idea of clarity, doesn't there?

on the 1001 th day and night

When you've run out of things to say to one another, the words turning as cold as the blank wall at 3 a.m. on a winter night. You count the hours to go but you can't read the time, there isn't enough light.Dreamer,dream me now.When you think back because that's the only way you can think...

The old music, that survives in forgotten, sleepy small towns. The song, the singer, reaching a kind of fame-if you want to call it that-for a few days, one summer. A kind of perfection, that knows its own end. Now that lost music is in your eyes.

Your jumpers have holes in them around the shoulders; there are toothpaste marks, rubbed off but the smudge still visible, on the front. Your jeans are torn on the inner side. Yes, the inner side, never your best. Your shoes have never been polished and their colour has faded from neglect and indifference. You comb your hair with your fingers, not bothered to look for your cheap plastic comb.

Why, what's up with you? Anyone would think you've fallen in love...or out of love. This is how you live when you have a cold heart.